A Summer Spent Sifting Through Peary Artifacts on Eagle Island

This summer, two Bowdoin students are, for the first time, inventorying all the contents in the Harpswell home of Arctic explorer Robert Peary. The meticulous work of Tharunkrishna Vemulapalli ’19 and Dana Williams ’18 will culminate in a museum catalog for the historical site.

While the work is deliberate, the setting is dramatic. From every open window of Robert Peary’s bluff-side cottage on Eagle Island, you can hear seabirds crying and the tide pulling in and out over the beach or crashing onto rocks. All around the shingled house — one of just three structures on the 17-acre island — are panoramic views of Casco Bay.

Peary made his fame by reaching North Pole in 1909, an accomplishment that has been disputed. He bought the small almond-shaped island off the end of the Harpswell peninsula in 1881, four years after graduating from Bowdoin, and he built a family home there in 1904. Read the full story at Bowdoin News.

Please bear with us while we retroactively post obituaries from back issues of Bowdoin Magazine. This process has currently skewed the chronology of our listings. We're working to fix the problem. In the meantime, please go to bowdoinobituaries.com and search by class year.